Your Questions About Montana Renewables, (Partly) Answered

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In this day and age of online hyperventilating, it’s always — well, let’s say mostly — refreshing to dip into the CleanTechnica comments for news, insights, and alternative perspectives from our readers. A recent story about biofuel is a case in point. On January 10 CleanTechnica posted a press release from the Energy Department, detailing a $1.67 billion loan guarantee to the firm Montana Renewables, aimed at increasing domestic production of sustainable aviation fuel. Except, the press release left out one key detail…

What Is The Feedstock For This So-Called Sustainable Aviation Fuel?

As of the morning of January 11, two of our readers wanted to know what feedstocks are going into the company’s formula for sustainable aviation fuel. I read the press release, and I had the same question, too.

“The loan guarantee will help finance the expansion of a renewable fuels facility in Great Falls, Montana to produce sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), renewable diesel, and renewable naphtha,” the press release reads.

And, that’s just about all they had to say about that. “This project will utilize vegetable oils, fats, and greases to produce sustainable fuels,” the Energy Department added. That’s not a particularly helpful level of detail given the considerable controversy surrounding the use of land to grow energy crops.

The biofuel field is beginning to grow past the food-vs-fuel debate by moving the focus to camelina and other non-food oilseed crops that can grow on marginal, non-food lands. Still, the prospect of mowing down forests, grasslands, and other biodiverse habitats to grow energy crops is not a sustainable solution.

A more promising movement is afoot to replant derelict citrus plantations and other pre-stressed lands with new climate-hardy varieties that lend themselves to biofuel production as well as food and animal feed. Algae farming is another potential pathway for avoiding habitat destruction, though significant obstacles remain in that field. Neither of these options is available at scale here and now, though.

Why Montana?

One of our readers suggested trees and pig manure as two bio-resources readily available in the state of Montana at scale for biofuel production. Local and regional sourcing is a key factor in the Montana Renewables business model, so let’s take a look at that.

It’s not my job to defend one company or another, or the Energy Department, so what follows is not a defense of Montana Renewables or the Energy Department. As a time-saver for our readers, I went into the Montana Renewables website and looked at some of the factors that encouraged the Energy Department to provide the company with a $1.67 billion loan guarantee, keeping in mind that Montana Renewables had to compete against other stakeholders for the loan, and that the agency’s Loan Programs Office, which issued the loan, has established a solid track record of due diligence (see more LPO background here).

1. Montana Renewables already established competence in the SAF field at scale.
2. The company’s location in the state of Montana leverages significant local and regional US–Canadian biofuel resources, reducing costs and emissions related to transportation.
3. The Montana location serves a concentration of states and provinces in the northwest US and Canada that have enacted a Low Carbon Fuel Standard, also contributing to transportation savings.
4. Electricity for the Montana Renewables facility comes from hydroelectric power plants.

“Our production facility in Great Falls, Montana is strategically located close to major rail networks and international airports throughout the western United States and Canada. This strategic location significantly decreases the carbon emissions as well as transportation costs of SAF to product off-takers,” Montana Renewables emphasizes.

Additionally, the Loan Programs Office issued the loan through its Energy Infrastructure Reinvestment branch, through which it gives a fresh start to outdated or inoperable existing energy infrastructure. “This project will convert a portion of an oil refinery to produce renewable fuels. The project will also reduce the carbon intensity of steam production and consumption in the neighboring oil refinery,” the Energy Department notes.

What Are The Feedstocks?

As for the feedstocks of its various biofuels, Montana Renewables does offer a bit more detail on its website. Again, what follows is a time-saver for our readers, not a critique of the company’s biofuel business or its sourcing:

1. Canola oil: “Canola oil is an attractive feedstock for biodiesel production because it has a high yield per acre and a low level of saturated fatty acids, which can cause high viscosity in the final biodiesel product.”
2. Tallow: “A byproduct of the meat production industry, tallow is obtained from rendering the fatty tissues of cattle, pigs, and other livestock.”
3. Distillers’ Corn Oil (DCO): “Corn oil is extracted from the distillers’ dried grains with solubles (DDGS), a high-protein byproduct of the ethanol production process, and has similar properties to other vegetable oils, such as canola and soybean oil.”
4. Camelina Oil: “Camelina…is a fast-growing, drought-resistant oilseed crop that is well-suited to cultivation in regions with challenging climates and soils.”

Beyond Biofuels To Sustainable Air Travel

Among the readers commenting on the Montana Renewables press release so far, most went beyond the biofuel feedstock question to focus attention on long term sustainability solutions. Here are some of them with my comments in parentheses:

1. Make airline travel so expensive that demand drops by half (as a corollary, make rail and bus mass transit less expensive and more convenient).
2. Produce sustainable aviation fuels from sunlight and air-captured carbon dioxide instead of plants (the electrofuels industry is beginning to gear up, but costs are high).
3. Use hydrogen fuel instead of kerosene (the aviation industry is working on that angle, one of many complications being the impacts of an increase in water vapor from hydrogen combustion).

In addition to these solutions, the aviation industry is beginning to introduce battery electric aircraft and hydrogen fuel cell aircraft.

Still, the leading attraction of the SAF biofuel solution is the ability to drop in an alternative liquid fuel without having to replace the entire fuel delivery infrastructure and aircraft specifications, making it a near term solution if not a long term one.

Next Steps For Renewables

It remains to be seen if the $1.67 billion loan guarantee for Montana Renewables makes it through the incoming Trump administration’s game of budgetary whack-a-mole that is already brewing.

Chances are that the Trump budget-cutters will have to seek another target, though. On January 10 the Montana Renewables parent company Calumet announced the closing of a $1.44 guaranteed Energy Department loan facility, enabling construction to move forward on the new biofuel project. A loan facility enables a borrower to conduct a series of transactions without having to go through a cumbersome re-application each time (the remaining $233 million of the $1.67 billion loan consists of capitalized interest).

“This is essentially the largest agricultural investment in Montana history and will double our purchases of seed oils and tallow from approximately 1.5 billion pounds per year today to 3 billion pounds per year post expansion,” enthused Montana Renewables CEO Bruce Fleming.

That sounds like a bonanza for local and regional farmers and ranchers. Surely the Trump administration will do anything it can do to avoid hurting farmers and ranchers, right? Oh … on second thought….

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Image (cropped): Montana Renewables is planning to expand their sustainable aviation fuel footprint with an assist from the US Department of Energy (courtesy of Montana Renewables).